Monthly Archives: July 2009

menu plan Monday

Sticking to the standards

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Menu Plan Monday logoIt’s been a good long while since I participated in Menu Plan Monday. Not that we haven’t been eating, mind you. I don’t know what happened to June, but we’ve been away from home for most of July and I just started cooking and planning again last week. And I did it again this week! You won’t find anything new on the menu; we’re still at my dad’s house, and I wanted to try to make things I thought he might like.

Monday: Peanut butter chicken
Poppy loved this the last time we had it. But it’s been awhile since then. So cross your fingers for me.

Tuesday: Sloppy Joes

Wednesday: Fish stick po’ boys

Thursday: Maple-Dijon chicken

Friday: Sizzling rice soup
Friday is my brother’s birthday. If he were here, I’d take him out for a bowl of our favorite soup. He isn’t here, though, so I’m taking myself out for soup in his honor.

Family matters

On the road and hanging by a song

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Picture it. The Colonial Inn. Saginaw, Michigan. Spring 1975.

My dad was 22. He was at a nearly empty bar with a girl. There was another couple on the other side of the room, and a trio of guys in the corner. One of the guys left for a moment, came back with a guitar and handed it to one of the others. He started playing and singing a bit, and Dad thought, “Wow, he sounds just like John Denver.”

“I’d just started listening to John Denver,” Dad says, “and I didn’t know what he looked like. But man, he sounded just like him.”

The guy played for about an hour. If he’d known for certain, Dad says, he would’ve bought the guy a drink. But he wasn’t sure.

Until the next day, when he saw in the paper that John Denver was playing at the civic center.

Family matters

Summertime rolls

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The kids have been having a great big fabulous time, and I’ve been reading lots of terrible (and some pretty good) fiction.* We miss Rockford, who is hard at work while we lounge about. Otherwise, though, all is well.

* “The Cross-Country Quilters,” “Blood Brothers,” “I Capture the Castle,” “The Chamber,” “The Hollow” and “Three Bags Full.”